Smile!

Hi all! So glad you could join me! I'm so happy and excited to be the guest designer for Time Out Challenges today! This weeks theme centers around the quote, "Smile, it is the key that fits the lock of everybody's heart." Anthony J DeAngelo.

I love the thought and knew just what stamp set makes me smile so I had to use it! The little hanging monkey from Your Next Stamp's Monkeying Around set always puts a smile on my face when ever I flip through it in my stamps so it was a no brainer for me to use him in someway.

I first decided on using my Prismacolor pencils for coloring him in. They've been my go to as of late as I can stamp a bunch of images and curl up on the couch, watch a show and color. So for his cheeky little smiling face I used PC914 Cream, PC927 Light Peach, PC 939 Peach, and PC 928 Blush Pink. I shaded around the edges figuring with a round face the center would be the lightest.

Next for his body and the branch, I used a combination of Burnt Ochre, Sienna Brown, Light Umber, Dark Brown and Golden rod. His body was heavily Sienna Brown and Burnt Ochre, while his tail was more dark brown and Light Umber. Since I didn't want the branch and his body or tail to be the same exact color, I colored the branch with Light Umber, Dark Brown and Goldenrod.

Lastly, the leaves were colored with Apple Green, Limepeel and Chartreuse.

Once the monkey was colored in, I cut him out using my Brother Scan N Cut and tried to determine what kind of background he was going to be in. My sister-in-law bought me a fabulous 6x6 pack of spring plaids from Lawn Fawn for my birthday and the blue and blue green plaids just seemed to play well with the monkey. I figured the blue plaid would act as the sky while the green plaid would make it feel like a jungle.

I decided to line an A2 sized card with the blue plaid and then cut a monkey sized circle out of the green plaid using one of my circle dies. Once the circle was cut out, I then positioned my monkey in the middle of the circle and angled him slightly so he looked like he was swinging. I also added some banana leaves from that same monkey stamp set in the top right corner to give it a bit more weight.

Next, I die cut the word "smile" 3 times from some green cardstock, stacked them up and glued them together to give the word some dimension and placed it at the bottom center of the circle. Lastly, I added a combination green and yellow jewels from Honey Bee Stamps and other jewels I had that matched the color scheme.

I seriously am in love with this cheeky monkey and I hope you are too! Thanks for stopping by! I hope to see your posts in the Time Out Challenge for this "Smile" challenge and thank you again to the Time Out Challenge team for giving me the opportunity to guest blog!